Random thoughts of an American in Finland
Listening to a podcast on the history of Rome last week I ran across a bit of information totally new to me (of course, most information about ancient Rome is new to me). It was the story of Cincinnatus the Roman Dictator. A Dictator was an official in the Roman Republic chosen to lead the Romans through a crisis. He was given absolute power, but only temporarily, to do what was necessary in…
Day 87 of Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine. It’s been a busy week for Finland. On Monday the Finnish parliament debated NATO membership for 14 hours. How much debate there was, is itself debatable, since when the vote was held the next day there was overwhelming support for the move, with only 8 parliament members voting against it (out of 200), mostly from the Left Alliance party.…
Day 74 of Russia’s unprovoked war in Ukraine. This past week the Finnish army was holding its annual mechanized war exercises (which I guess means using tanks, etc.), named Arrow 22. This year, units from the American, British, Latvian and Estonian armies were taking part. Such a joint exercise with four NATO militaries at this particular moment, of course, doesn't go unnoticed. It's even gotten…
With the leak of the Supreme Court draft decision concerning abortion, it is now clear that Roe v. Wade will soon be overturned and abortion will become illegal in many states. Many people are upset by this. Many people, no doubt, are celebrating. It is a divisive issue. I have some thoughts. And a possible compromise solution. A modest proposal. The goal of Pro-Choice folks is to prevent unwanted…
Day 61 of Russia’s unprovoked war in Ukraine. The Finnish parliament began debating NATO membership last week. Russia already warned over a month ago that Finland joining the Western alliance would “ require retaliatory measures” on its part, with Sergei Belyayev, head of the Russian foreign ministry’s European department, promising “serious military and political consequences”. More recently,…
We recently sold my mother-in-law’s apartment in Varkaus, my wife’s hometown in the heart of the Finnish lake district 200 miles from Helsinki. It’s been over a year since my mother-in-law moved to a nursing home, so it was high time we did something with the apartment that we use only occasionally on visits to Varkaus. Selling the apartment, of course, required emptying and cleaning the place,…
The number of new COVID cases in Finland, as in many places, are rising as we enter the pandemic’s 4 th wave. Despite that, it feels like things are going well. Or maybe it just feels that way personally for me, since I’m now fully vaccinated, and soon (two weeks after the second dose) can travel again outside Finland, at least to certain counties. Estonia is one place we might visit before summer…
Last week we saw the six-month anniversary of Joe Biden's inauguration as president. Leading up to that event in January, I saw some MAGA folks on Facebook predicting that Biden would not "last six months". They were very confident. They had no doubt about this. They didn’t specify, however, why they thought Biden would not make it this far in his presidency (I asked one – they chose not to…
When it was announced that Joe Biden would be meeting with Vladimir Putin during Biden's June trip to Europe, there was some speculation that the meeting would take place in Helsinki. Hearing this, my wife and I looked at each other and after a moment said, “No way. That won't happen.” Since 2018, Helsinki has been forever tainted as a meeting place between American and Russian leaders. No…
Here in Finland, warm weather has finally arrived and so has the summer home improvement season. There’s lots to do, a LOT to do, so I’ve been trying not to pay as much attention to the crazy stuff happening back in the States. Except...you can’t really ignore all the crazy stuff happening in the State. Here’s what caught my attention recently. Joel Greenberg, the wingman of frat boy Matt Gaetz,…
It seems that MAGA folks are obsessing over the fact that Joe Biden hasn’t stood at a podium and taken questions from the media some 50 days after taking office. I don’t think it’s because they are so eager to hear from their new president. Nothing like that. They are annoyed that Biden (as they see it) is escaping scrutiny from the same press that gave Donald Trump such a hard time throughout his…
Joe Biden has been president for a week now, and it is certainly refreshing to have what seems so far to be a normally competent administration in place. Even more refreshing is not having Donald Trump in our faces every day non-stop. Suddenly, one day – like a miracle – it disappeared. It is somewhat comforting to know Trump’s hidden away, almost in exile down in Mar-a-Lago for now, though I hear…
It is an article of faith among Trump and his followers that Joe Biden is too old, feeble-minded, and physically weak to be president. (File this under “pot calling the kettle black”.) I see MAGA folks saying this all the time, and maybe they believe it, but I’m not sure Trump himself believes it. In this case, he might just be more cynical than delusional, using anything he can to cast doubts…
So, after almost four years as president (and decades of hard work by Republicans before Trump), Trump finally announced the big GOP healthcare overhaul to replace Obamacare. It seems basically to consist of: 1) a promise to cover pre-existing conditions (after first ensuring the SCOTUS takes that coverage away). No details of how that promise would be fulfilled, what laws would be enacted to…
Lately some folks in the US (especially in the South, you could even say the Old Confederacy) have become outraged over the idea of renaming military bases that have been named after Confederate military officers, such as Fort Bragg or Foot Hood. Often these folks equate such removal of CSA-related names as “erasing” or “ignoring” history. This has even gotten the attention of Donald Trump, no…
A couple of things I picked up from the news from yesterday. -- Trump is threatening to "adjourn" Congress because it's not confirming his nominees for various offices. First of all, I didn't know a president could do that (if it's even true). Secondly, why didn't Obama think of that? It would have simplified things for him. Thirdly, that will come in handy for President Biden. -- A key part of…
Today is Easter Monday, the end of our four-day Easter holiday. Normally, a four-day holiday on the cusp of vaguely spring-like weather is a Godsend for most Finnish families, often a good opportunity to get out of town for a while or even an end-of-season ski trip to Lapland. Of course, this year in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, it's different, with all restaurants, bars, theaters,…
I was recently reminded of a part of Helsinki with a very colorful name. It's one very small part of South Harbor, where the big ferries from Sweden dock, a mostly enclosed "basin" not much bigger than an Olympic swimming pool, with only a narrow passage out. N ext to the busy Kauppatori open-air market square, and the site of the yearly Baltic Herring Market, it is at the epicenter of Helsinki…
Trump boasts that this year’s 3.4% increase in holiday retail sales is the highest in US history, somehow ignoring the fact that only last year those sales increased 5.1%. You would think a very stable genius would understand that 5.1 is a bigger number than 3.4. You would think a president would have advisors who could explain this to him. Apparently not. The 3.4% number comes from a report on…
I suspect that many Trump followers are not well served by their preferred media, which have led them to believe wholeheartedly in various scandals that haven't panned out, even after much investigation, like Benghazi, while not believing in other scandals that are real and unfolding before our eyes. A steady diet of Fox News leaves these MAGA folks ill-prepared when the "scandal" of the moment…
Okay, the level of crazy during the Trump presidency has always been high, but boy in the last week or so, it’s been upped a couple of notches. Some of the highlights: Lindsey Graham claimed that the witches of Salem were treated better than Donald Trump has been during the impeachment investigation. He’s talking about women accused, imprisoned and sometimes hung because some of their neighbors…
Listening to Donald Trump's "on the nose" denials of a quid pro quo in his phone call with Gordon Sondland the other day, I couldn't help imagining a similar kind of exchange... A phone rings. Tony Soprano picks up. “Hey Tony, it’s Paulie. Listen, you were talking about Lefty Caputo the other day.” “You mean my long-time friend Johnny Caputo, who, out of a no doubt sincere, but badly misguided…
Public hearings in the Trump impeachment have now started, something sure to keep me the edge of my seat for the next couple of weeks. In the lead up to all this, one thing I’ve found especially exasperating is how Donald Trump and his followers obsess so much on the whistleblower, as if the whole case against impeachment hinges on whether an investigation sparked by complaint from an anonymous…
I don’t normally note Veteran’s Day, since I’m a liberal, and liberals tend not to valorize the military the way conservatives do. And by “valorize”, I mean the kind of conspicuous virtue signaling of patriotism that American conservatives love to plaster across their social media. Flags, eagles, that sort of stuff. However, to make a blatant political point, I thought it might be interesting to…
Defense attorney: "Your Honor, while it is true that my client was present in the 7-11 on the night of the 24th and that he did point a loaded revolver at the cashier while requesting him to empty the cash register, I'd like to point out that -- as the surveillance video from the store has clearly shown -- my client did not ONCE say to the cashier that this was an armed robbery. He did not once…